JOURNAL OF RESEARCH AND PLANNING IN HIGHER EDUCATION
Year:2002 | Volume:8 | Issue:3(25)|Papers Count:13

Scientifice development in Iran requires national commitment for redesigning structure of scientific system by developing decision making mechanism. Policy making should be done through scientific and civil interactions accompanied by collective critics and thoughts. Based on systems approach, scientific development process has reciprocal and systematic relationship to the processes such as scientific culture, management and planning structure, legal environment, institutions of scientific systems, infrastructure and equipment, communication and information technology, open international interactions, financial resourses and credits, human resourses, and finally standardization, evaluation, accreditation and national overseeing.

The accelerating global dynamism profoundly affects various of human life and social institutions. Universities are among the institutions that are facing a new broad and fundamental changes. Technology dynamism, especially information and communication technology (ICT), plays a dominant role in the process of academic current evolution. Therefore, universities interface various challenges and serious challenges and serious problems. This paper comprises of two sections. Identification and grouping of university problems have been considered in the first section. The universities of the developed, developing, and in transition (ex-eastern bloc) countries have been studied. In general, eleven groups of problems have been found for the universities. Lack of capacity, demand for increasingly new disciplines, increasing variety of students, budget deficiency, increasing competitive environment, and emergence of non-traditional universities are common problems in all higher education entities in the world. The universities of developing countries face to additional problems such as the gap between academic activities and the national development processes, and the chronic barriers due to under-developed sectors. Finally,the intransition countries suffer from interfere of government, as the owner, in university management, and non-institutionalized privatization. The second section contains a model which has been developed for the National Science Development System of the I.R. of Iran.The model development is based on strategy management theories and cybernetics.

Recently, co-authorship in publication of a research or scientific paper has been considered the most important indicator of international scientific collaboration. Those who do not collaborate have a very tiny chance of getting published or be part of the scientific giant component. In Iran, the rate of international collaboration is lower than 8 percent, while many other developing countries put much value into international collab0ration and have gained many scientific achievements in the last few decades. There are a few obstacles which hamper scientific collaboration of Iran with overseas scientists: i) Many of Iranian policy makers are not aware of the importance of collaboration and believe that scientific self-reliance is possible in short term. ii)US sanctions against Iran and our policy of no relation with USA has limited our access to modern science and many collaboration opportunities. iii)Visa issuance is very difficult for Iranian scientists who would like to collaborate with their European and Americancounterparts. iv)The quality of Internet access is very poor in Iran and there are few digital libraries that Iranian academic institutes could afford the subscription fees. We postulate several comments for a better international scientific collaboration: 1) Only in USA, there are more than 5000 Iranian faculty members and university professors who could be the first line of collaborators with Iranian scientists. Contacting them and asking them for collaboration has resulted in an enthusiastic "yes" shortly after. 2) Some research centers and institutes have initiated scientific collaboration with their US counterparts and created an atmosphere of scientific exchange which resulted in significant development of those centers. 3) There are many scholarships, fellowships and grants. for Iranian scientists and researchers which are funded by charity foundations and international scientific societies. Targeting and using those opportunities is highly recommended. 4) Iranian ministry of foreign affairs could facilitate visa issuance of Iranian scientists Who would like to participate in seminars and conferences worldwide. 5) There is practically no governmental funds allocated for scientific collaboration. The cost of creating collaboration is much less than purchasing expensive equipments for the laboratories. 6)In this little world village, collaboration could start from a short meeting in a conference and been followed up bye-mailing and Internet. Therefore, there is no need for follow-up visits which could be costly an impossible for soft currency nations. 7)Iranian consulates must target Iranian scientists and sources for collaboration in Europe and introduce them to relevant scientific bodies in Iran to initiate further scientific collaborations.

There is an over whelming social demand for higher education in Iran. despite its rapid expansion after the Islamic Revolution(1979), and a rate of growth of capacity of higher education system, the current system is not yet responsive to the tremendous demand. Major strategies that led to the aforementioned results were encouraging private sector to invest in higher education and utilization of alternative modes such as distance and corresspondence education. Country"s development in cultural, scientific and economic aspects is deemed impossible withot further expansion of higher education. Therefore, "expansion of access to higher education" has become the focus of attention in a national scale project which serves as an integral part of a larger project scheme having "scientific and technological development" as it"s long term end-in-view. The impetus for this particalar project is generated not only by the current imbalance between supply and demand in this area, but is further intensified by realizing that the social demand will increase and the gap will be widened in the future. In other words, continuation of current trends and regularities in the realm of higher education will lead to grave concerns and consequences and should, therefore, be treated as a delicate and critical national priority. A thorough investigation of current state of affairs along with identification of factors which has historically debilitated the expansion of higher education, is the first order of business in this project. Additionally, the strategies employed by countries with records of achievement in this respect will be studied to gain further insight, to establish benchmarks, and to devise appropriate strategies responsive to the socio-cultural-economic context of Iran.

The world village is now realizing due to exceeding rate of information production and consumption in the human societies and their improved dependencies on information flow in decision-making, policy-making and management processes. The two main aspects of informative development are: communication and cultural infrastructure which play the basic rules in description of new style of social life. In this paper, we discuss about educational system reform uLder the characteristics of informative world change and explain the position of this amendment in informative development processes especially in Iran.

Considering the importance of scientific-applied training from different aspects and increasing high school and university graduates, one of the most important issue at the present time for the government of 1. R. of Iran is employment. In recent years, there has been a great movement toward a more applicable training system to cope with dynamic and rapid changes at the national and global levels. However, it seems there are several problems such as disharmony between training and economic plans, the lack of lawful system of scientificapplied training, the lack of policies and strategies for software andhardware facilities and equipments,and finally the lack ofcomprehensive training program which have made the scientific-applied training system of the country inefficient and ineffective. In this paper the aim is to conseptualize a model that views this issue with a systematic and process approaches.

Considering the present situation of Science and Technology trends, shows the inefficient system of technological activities in Iran. With reference to the new responsibility of the Ministry of Science, Research and Technology in Islamic Republic of iran, and based on Iranian Five Years Plan for economical, social and cultural development, this study looks at the main dimensions( legal framework, human resource, Institutions, infrastructure and management) of the technology development system. The main output of this research consists of the preparation of an analytical study which intended to serve as a strategic framework and operational tools for policy making in technology development at the national level.

The new information age and the rapid speed of knowledge and information resource production is the main reason of why the organizations can"t supply and posses all of the required resources. It must be noted that information nature has been changed to be an expensive good and it dramatically influences on library acquisition policies, today. Recently, the national 3-year project called "Document Supply Project", has passed its test period. This project has been based on universities" information resource sharing and it is necessary to decide about its development for future years. this paper evaluates the main aspects of the D.S.P and how it has influenced on the information productivity in Iran and suggests the key notes of planning for future development and extension of this idea for national-wide progresses.

In today"s academic and research environment the use of tools and apparatus are enormously important. In Iran, for many different reasons, chiefly among them the lack of local manufacturing base and improper government policies in this regard, most of research equipment is usually imported at a very high cost. The restriction for the purchase of research tools from multi suppliers due to political and economical embargos are also an added complication. In the face of these difficulties, a great deal of apparatus and research instruments exist across the universities and research establishments which are either improperly installed and or not functional due to lack of maintenance or spare parts. The project aims to investigate the state of research logistics quantitatively as well as qualitatively in the hope to establish a proper regime for better financing, purchase, maintenance and use

Nano-science and nano-technology along side molecular biology and molecular genetics and computatioanl science and information technology form the basis of the present scientific-industrial revolution. The convergence of these three fields, which takes place at the nano-scale, will lead to the emergence of revolutionary transformations in present-day science and technology. The worldwide study of the development of nano-science and nano-technology shows that these two fields are among the first national priorities in many developed, as well as developing, countries. We show that in order to actively participate in this incipient revolution, we must start forming the necesssary scientific and industrial infrastructures for the establishment and development of nano-technology in Iran.

Every country or organization must proceed to strategic planning and choose appropriate strategies for any strategic issue in orde. to encounter with rapidly changing environmental conditions in suitable and rational ways and to settle important internal problems and to continue its active presence in international scenes. The national strategy of every country essentially covers a broad spectrum of the country"s different strategies in various fields such as: education, research, science, technology, industry, etc. National strategies, indicate the goals of countries in different political, economical, social, cultural, defensive, security fields and so forth. Preparation of a national strategy needs comprehensive information, a planning group composed of experts of all fields, the will of distinguished officials, cooperation of mass managements and national mobilization for a successful performance. This paper intends to explain the importance of Biotechnology and the need for the preparation of a national strategy for this technology and the necessity of national cooperation in order to achieve its aims.

The change of Productive Technology(P.T) to Informative Technology (I.T) is the start point of a new stage in human life, which is creating a novel shap of society, called cyber-society. Therefore it"s very important to know the characteristics of this new frame work and plan a reasonable and scientific development program to assure the balanced national-wide informative improvement. In this paper defining informative development and its various aspects, the informative plan of a few developed and under developed countries has been described and the main framework of Iran comprehensive informative development system has been proposed through discussing the apriori-informative plan.